Echoing Unto Eternity
by Tankyu-sha
Summary: At the end of it all, the paradox breaks. A soul trapped by time is freed, uniting with the only one who always trusted her. Their story has not a conclusion, but an opening to an eternity once denied... Alternate/expanded ending to the Buddy Complex finale. Aoba/Hina.


"It's me, Aoba! Watase Aoba!"

There was a battle raging all around, in the dark skies of Alaska. She herself had fired shot after shot into the maelstrom, accounting for more of Zogilia's enemies than any other single unit save her partner; yet until that very moment, she didn't really _see_ any of it. The fog that had enveloped her mind-

"Hina, please!"

"Ao…ba…?" She slowly blinked, staring with scant comprehension at the blue and white Confederation Valiancer that had locked blades with her own. Improbably, its cockpit was opening, the pilot standing up; he was removing his helmet, even as her display automatically zoomed in…

Brown hair. Olive eyes. And that voice… _"You are you, right? Yumihara or Ryazan, you're Hina."_ That time before, before the fog engulfed her mind, he'd said that.

In her mind, beyond the fog, it clicked. The island, the infiltration, her father's death, and the one person who'd _understood_-!

Hina's eyes snapped back into focus. "Aoba!"

With clarity came pain, the Coupling System she didn't remember using flung into a tailspin by the sudden change in her mental state. She cried out, the backlash surging agonizingly in her brain; she could hear Bizon screaming over the radio as his end of the link collapsed in turmoil.

The two machines fell out of the synch granted by the Coupling; Hina's last conscious sight being Aoba's Valiancer knocking her scythe away, and rushing forward to catch her.

* * *

Consciousness returned, creeping in slowly but without the fog that had smothered Hina's mind for so long now. The pain was fading, too, leaving only weariness behind; weariness, and a strange sense of relief, something she couldn't quite put a finger on.

A welcome voice put a name to that feeling. "Are you awake, Hina?"

She brought her head up to look at the Valiancer that was carrying her Proto Valiancer 01, so similar to the Confederation unit she herself had captured not long ago, then down to the communications display on her instrument panel. There, smiling at her, was the face of the one person who had reacted with understanding, not anger, when her father died and she lost her way.

"Aoba…?" she whispered.

"It's me," he confirmed, visibly relaxing. Chuckling, even. "Wow. I was afraid we might end up fighting again, Hina, but I had no idea you were a Coupler yourself!"

Hina slowly shook her head, still trying to remember exactly how she'd gotten here in the first place. "I don't understand… I told Doctor Hahn I _didn't_ want to participate in the experiment…"

"What do you mean?" The sharp voice was… She thought she remembered hearing it once before, when Aoba called for rescue that day; perhaps during the Valiancer theft, too. That made him…

_Dio, right? Aoba kept talking about "Dio", back when we were enemies…_

Another, completely unfamiliar voice broke into the transmission. _"I couldn't speak to the exact details, but I know Doctor Hahn."_ The woman's voice was filled with disgust. _"Results are all he cares about. If the subject was unwilling, he'd just go right ahead and force the issue; drugs, probably. Combined with whatever he's done with the Coupling System…"_

Hina was still absorbing that, and beginning to vaguely recall something about a syringe, when a scream came over the radio. "That's _my _Hina, damn you! Get the _hell_ away from her!"

She looked up, just in time to see the purple Valiancer Bizon had been granted stomp on the red-trimmed Confederation unit, then slam Aoba's away from her with a brutal kick. Her own verniers still offline, Hina began to plummet.

Bizon swooped down after her, casting aside the heavy cannons that _hadn't_ been shot up by Aoba earlier, and caught her Valiancer. "Hina, are you alright?" he demanded harshly. "We have to engage the Coupling one more time!"

"No!" Hina snapped, eyes wide with horror. "Bizon, you have to stop this!"

_I don't want this! Bizon used to be such a good friend, but now he's… he's…!_ She remembered his behavior ever since she came back from the island where she and Aoba had begun to reconcile, and shuddered.

"Hurry!" Bizon snarled, heedless of her protests. Beyond his Valiancer, Aoba and Dio were still coming, and he knew it. "They're almost on us! There's no time!" She could hear the sound of his frantic keystrokes over the radio. "Connective, Hina!"

"_No!"_ The turmoil of the warped Coupling System filled Hina's mind again, and she railed against it, clutching her helmet in both hands, beating back against the system's attempt to link her mind to her increasingly-unstable comrade. _"No, stop it!"_

"What's wrong, Hina?! Are you okay?!"

"Answer me, Hina! Hina, now!"

"_Stop it!__** Stop it!"**_ She couldn't answer the first call, much as she wanted to, and it was taking her everything she could muster to fight off the mental onslaught accompanying the second.

_No!_ Hina screamed silently, clinging to the memory of kind words. _I won't be his enemy again! I _won't_!_

Without the drugs compromising her mind, she could resist, even against Bizon's increasingly frantic demands, but the battle was hard-fought. It could've been seconds, or it could've been hours; as far as she could tell, it might even have been days. Still she fought it, even as her resistance began to crumble-

A voice cut through the pain. "Hina! _We're_ going to do it! Connect with _me_ instead!"

The shock of that statement forced away the onslaught for a few precious seconds, her battered mind given something else to focus on instead. "What…? Aoba…" Did he mean…?

Able to focus her eyes again, she saw him on her monitor, looking grimly determined. "It's all right, Hina. Trust me, please!"

"Aoba…"

On the other end, sounding like a mad dog now, Hina could hear what used to be her friend still howling. _"Hina!"_ he screamed. _"Connective, Hina!"_

A comment from Dio that she couldn't hear; then, "Connective, Hina!"

Hina closed her eyes. On one side, the friend she'd grown up with, who had supported her for so long, only to turn jealous and possessive the moment "competition" appeared; Bizon's subsequent blackmail and his actions at her father's funeral had shown he was more concerned with having her to himself than any interest one way or the other in matters of "treason". A "friend" who now sounded more like a rabid animal than the boy she'd once treasured.

On the other side, an enemy Valiancer pilot who'd appeared out of nowhere, claiming to know her, whose actions had nearly gotten her executed on the mere suspicion of being a traitor. Who had refused to ever fire on her for real, who had gone beyond all sense to save her life -twice- when they were stranded together on a deserted island. An "enemy" who had allowed her use of his highly-classified Valiancer to call in her own people for rescue, and, despite acknowledging he was wrong about who she was, had given her the only thing he had of "his" Hina.

Who had given her nothing but kindness and the offer of sanctuary when her father died and she learned she might well _be_ "that" Hina… where Bizon had nearly shot her for it.

Hina closed her eyes, lips moving in the only answer possible. The world went white.

* * *

There was nothing there but the two of them. Aoba, in the flightsuit she'd always seen him in; Hina, in a school uniform she assumed was from his memory of her. Just the two of them, standing in an endless field of blue-tinted white.

"At the beginning," Hina began, meeting his eyes, "I hated you. I even tried to kill you, seeing you only as an enemy of Zogilia, and therefore _my_ enemy."

Aoba only smiled at that. "Yeah, that's true. You did."

"Despite that, despite everything, you continued to place your trust in me, never quite giving up on the idea that I was 'that' Hina." She took a deep breath, eyes falling shut. "Along the way, you made me think about what I was really doing, and after my father died, you helped me, when my friends turned on me."

"I couldn't do anything else," he told her, still smiling. "Whether you're 'my' Hina or not, you deserved better."

"Thank you, Aoba. For everything. You trusted me all this time; now I'll place my trust in you." Hina's eyes opened, meeting his again, and it was her turn to smile. _"Acception."_

* * *

Blue-tinted white light replaced the coursing red-and-black illuminating Hina's Coupling System, and erupted from the Valiancer itself. The surge of power blasted Bizon's unit off her and away, and even as she pulled around in a wide turn, her Valiancer's aeroscale wings flared back to life, the machine converting to full Coupling operation.

Ahead of her now, Aoba's unit did likewise, and both their Valiancers were engulfed in brilliant light. Rushing straight ahead, the power emitted from them collided, birthing a brilliant kaleidoscopic globe of energy.

Hina hardly noticed the light show, only faintly heard Bizon shrilly demanding to know why she'd done this, heard someone on the Confederation end of things exclaiming about Emphatier levels. That didn't seem to matter now. Her eyes were focused, now, on the machine she now knew to be Luxon NX; focused on Watase Aoba, who for the third time had saved her.

After everything, it seemed like they could hardly know each other. After just a few things, it seemed like he knew her better than anyone else ever could. Regardless of what happened next, she had at least found someone who truly _understood._

Hina found herself smiling. She didn't know what tomorrow would bring, but she did at least know-

"Aoba, watch out!"

She jerked her head up at Dio's warning, and both her Valiancer and Luxon spun just in time to see the gigantic crimson blast from Gala Puska, her own country's ultimate weapon, bearing down on them. In time to see, but not to dodge.

Nor, apparently, necessary to dodge, as for the second time in less than a minute, she and Aoba did the impossible.

The energy bolt powered by a full year's production of Nectoribium collided with the energy field produced by the most powerful Coupling ever achieved, and rebounded, expanded, surrounded the field. It couldn't break the impromptu barrier, could only beat at it and bounce, nearly swallowing Bizon's Valiancer in the process.

As swiftly as it appeared, as it expanded, the globe of red fire suddenly contracted, shrinking to a point in the sky. Stillness for a brief second, and then-light. A glowing golden vortex spun into existence, swirling out of nothingness, close to where Bizon had been dragged by the explosion.

Hina stared at it, awed. Over the radio link she still had to Zogilian forces, she could hear a voice speaking with the calm of someone in shocked detachment; the voice was saying something about a singularity, and she could believe it.

_This is the power of a Coupling System?_ she thought. _Power enough to withstand the Gala Puska, and force its energy to do _that?_ …It's unbelievable._

She could vaguely hear a retreat being ordered, before the calm voice said something to shatter her reverie. _"Propulsion problem on Proto-Valiance Unit Two,"_ the voice said. _"At his current rate of acceleration, he will be unable to escape the singularity's event horizon."_

Finally regaining enough equilibrium to follow Aoba and Dio in racing _away_ from the ravening vortex, Hina's gaze fixed on Bizon's unit. Sure enough, though he was pushing his verniers as hard as he could, he wasn't pulling away from the singularity; indeed, one thruster was flickering wildly. _That's it,_ she realized, just as the thruster gave up the ghost completely. _When he kicked Aoba, he damaged his thrusters!_

There was an irony there, with the Valiancer falling into the vortex because of self-inflicted damage. She just didn't know she was detached enough yet to appreciate it. "Bizon…"

The next words over the radio wiped that thought, too, from her mind. "I remember that," Aoba breathed. "That's… the same thing from back then, isn't it…"

"What are you talking about?" Dio demanded. Then, after a sharp intake of breath, "Wait. Isn't that-!"

"I told you before, didn't I? And you must've seen it when we were using Skyknight and Firebrand. In my home time, that thing appeared, and going through that brought me to this era." Aoba paused; from her link across their Coupling, Hina could feel that he was having trouble believing it himself. "A time tunnel…"

"A time tunnel?" she repeated, flashing back to when he'd finally had a chance to explain himself to her, that night on that island. He'd spoken of it then, but she was still so unsure, only just getting over the idea of Aoba being a mortal enemy; she'd barely paid attention to the wilder parts of his tale.

"You're right," she heard Dio murmur. "That _does_ look like the thing I saw…"

"Yeah. I'm pretty sure that was it."

"So… it was all true…" Hina whispered. "It's impossible, and yet…"

"How _dare_ you?!"

The hateful voice over the radio shocked her. Glancing down at her displays, she saw that she did, indeed, still have a link to Bizon's Valiancer. It was inside the time tunnel, still falling away, but it hadn't vanished from the present era yet.

"I won't let you get away with this, Watase Aoba!" Bizon howled over the radio, still fighting to drag his machine out of the depths of time.

The sheer _hate_ in his voice, so unlike the friend she'd once believed him to be, somehow brought memories back to the surface: the other things Aoba had told her about his journey to this era. Something about…

"_You were the one who brought me here in the first place, remember?"_

"_There was a Valiancer attack at my school, and you were the one who saved me…"_

Hina felt suddenly sick. _Aoba… this is what led to him being attacked! It was Bizon, all along!_ The thought of Bizon coming so close to killing the one person who _understood_ her… Yet he'd been stopped, somehow. _A… time tunnel…_ Her eyes widened. _Of course! I understand, now. Everything led… right here, right now!_

It was all clear. What had happened in the past, why Aoba had been so fixated on her-and what it was that she needed to do. It wasn't just clear, it was inevitable. It had already happened, hadn't it?

Hina kicked in her Valiancer's thrusters, hard, and made a dash straight for the singularity.

"Hina!" Aoba shouted, startled. "What are you doing?!"

"What's wrong?!" Dio echoed.

She didn't look back. If she looked back, she didn't think she could bring herself to do what needed to be done. She understood, now, understood it all. Even the worst of it. "It's just like you told me, Aoba," she called back. "Everything you said was true. I see that now."

"What are you talking about?!"

"You saved me," she said, forging on ahead. "Now, it's my turn to save you! Just like you told me!"

"Wait! _Hina!"_

Hina could hear the pain in Aoba's voice, could even feel it across the Coupling, but she couldn't stop. Even as the golden light of the time tunnel engulfed her Valiancer, she couldn't stop. Not if she wanted him to live. If she wanted him to ever meet her to begin with.

She understood, now. Where she'd come from, when her father had found her, and where she would go by following Bizon back through time. An ontological paradox, Hina had heard such a thing called: she would go back in time, join Aoba's school, protect him from Bizon, and go back forward, returned to childhood, to the place where her father found her.

Ten years down the line, she would once again meet Watase Aoba, and in the end, dive through the tunnel into time to save him again. And again.

_I must've done this dozens of times now,_ she thought, _or more. And I always will. This is where everything begins, and ends, and begins again. A never-ending loop in time, for Aoba's sake._

It was a disquieting thought, and left open the brain-bending question of where Hina, Yumihara or Ryazan, came from in the first place. Yet it was a choice she made every time, the same way, and she knew that she would do so again.

Because it was Watase Aoba's life at stake, and in the end he was the one constant in this looped life of hers.

"See you later, Aoba," Hina murmured to herself, smiling sadly. "And… see you soon."

Yes, she was resigned to this. For his sake, even across all eternity, she would-

A mechanical hand lifted into view on her display, and clamped onto her Valiancer's torso. An armored face followed it, and so did a voice.

"Hina, don't go! Please!"

Hina stared at Luxon, uncomprehending. "Aoba?! What do you think you're doing?!"

"I know what you're going through now!" Aoba said fiercely. "It's time to stop it! It's time to put an end to doing this over and over again!" On her display, she thought she could actually see tears in his eyes.

"Don't be an idiot!" she snapped back, stunned. "If I don't go back, no one will be there to stop Bizon from killing you!"

"I _know_ that!"

"If you know that, then why-?!"

A red hand came into sight, grasping Luxon's shoulder in turn. "Don't even bother," Dio advised her gruffly. "When Aoba gets like this, talking to him is useless." He snorted; yet to Hina, it sounded almost friendly. Almost. "Aoba, we only have one shot. Don't miss!"

"Roger that!"

Hina realized, then, what Aoba and Dio had in mind. Understood it as clearly as she'd understood the rest, including that getting through to Aoba was impossible just now. Understood, too, that everything _had_ still come down to this.

Bizon, who had fallen to a point where the only thing that seemed to matter to him was "possessing" her, and killing Watase Aoba for the simple crime of trying to befriend her.

Aoba, who had chosen to defy fate itself to save her from the loop she'd been caught in for ages unknown, who had told her one thing Bizon never would: to make her _own_ choice.

A strange lurching in her heart, a warm feeling in her stomach. Even as Luxon and its red twin leveled their Nectar rifles to either side of her Valiancer, Hina twisted around as well, to bring her own weapon to bear.

She mourned Bizon. Truly, she did. But the friend she'd known had died some weeks back, twisted into someone else for reasons she would probably never understand. What she was about to help put down was nothing but a mad dog.

"_What the hell do you bastards think you're doing now?!"_ that twisted, mad voice howled.

_I'm sorry, Bizon._

"So long," Hina heard Aoba say. And then, twin lances of actinic orange fire blazed out, smashing into Proto-Valiancer Unit Two at head and pelvis level, blasting it to pieces with the raw power of Nectoribium-backed weapons. Somehow, miraculously, Bizon himself tumbled out of the disintegrating wreckage unharmed, still screaming his hate.

_Sayonara._

With one last thought to the friend she'd lost, in the language of the friend she'd gained, Yumihara Hina pulled the trigger.

A bullet fit to pierce even a Proto-Valiancer's armor struck Bizon directly. The mad dog… was put down.

* * *

Three Valiancers fled the collapsing golden vortex that was the time tunnel, the singularity forged by an unprecedented melding of powers. One carried another in its arms, carefully guarded by the third; they managed to break free from its gravitational pull with only a couple of seconds to spare.

The singularity snapped shut, carrying with it the pitiful remains of Bizon and his Valiancer, and the very storm clouds that had covered the Alaskan battlefield up to now, leaving stunningly clear skies. Clear skies, and the remains of the battle itself.

With the Coupling Valiancers they'd counted on no longer available to them, the element of surprise lost, and the sheer shock of the Gala Puska's shot being denied, the Zogilian formations were degenerating into chaos. Even Hina's former commander, the infamous Alfried Gallant himself, couldn't pull a victory out of this disaster; over the encrypted channels her Valiancer was still tapped into, she could hear frantic calls for retreat.

"We have the momentum now," Dio commented. "But the Gorgon is still out there. If they do something rash…"

_Gorgon? Oh, that must be their codename for the Gala Puska…_

Hina dragged her thoughts away from the fallen Bizon. "I'm surprised they fired even the second shot," she put in. "I don't know the details, but I heard it uses far too much Nectoribium to risk using very often. Supposedly as much as a year's production."

Dio considered that for a moment. "Not smart of them," he commented. "But after the second shot, we can't rule out a third if they get desperate." He paused. "Aoba vouches for you, and I… have reason to trust that. But I have to ask, Ms… Ryazan? How far _can_ we trust you?"

"Dio-" Aoba began.

"It's a fair question, Aoba," Hina cut him off, and took a moment to consider it herself. "…Dio, I will gladly give the full details later, but right now, let me just say I have been treated _very_ badly by my own country of late, and not just by Doctor Hahn or Bizon. It's not _easy_ for me, but rest assured, I have _no_ intention of returning to Zogilia." She took a deep breath. "Also… right now, the kindest parting gift I could give them is making sure the Gala Puska -the Gorgon, as you call it- cannot impoverish them."

Silence. She could feel Aoba writhing internally, but she forced herself to wait for the presumably senior pilot's decision.

_After all, turning a coat is never easy, and always leaves the question of whether they might turn again. _I_ know what's been done to me, but he has no reason to believe all that yet._

"Fair enough," Dio said at last. "I'll just trust the idiot's judgment this time." Another snort, much like the one in the time tunnel. "So far, amazingly, he's mostly been right." He _almost_ seemed to smile. "If you're up for it, you and Aoba lead us in."

"Of course. And… it's Yumihara. Not Ryazan."

_I'm sorry, Father,_ Hina thought, lifting away from Luxon's grasp to fly by Aoba's side under her own power. _I know this isn't what you would have wanted, but it's the only path I can take, now. Aoba is the only one I can really trust._

She comforted herself with the thought that her father might, at least, have understood her decision, if he'd known everything that had happened to her. Disagreed, perhaps, but understood.

She would never know, but the thought was enough for her.

Behind them, the ship called _Cygnus_ led the Confederate fleet in their wake, chasing back the Zogilian forces that had so recently seemed undefeatable.

* * *

The battle was over. The Gala Puska had been destroyed, and the Zogilian mobile forces were running with their tails between their legs. The war, no doubt, was far from over, but it didn't take an economist to realize the battle would've set Zogilia back a great deal even if they'd somehow won. Two years' worth of Nectoribium production had been expended, for the sake of destroying a few ships and Valiancers out of _one_ Confederate fleet.

And the second shot hadn't even accomplished that much. The destruction of the remaining loyal Coupling Valiancer was the only notable result in either direction; Hina doubted it would've been even remotely worthwhile even had the shot taken out Aoba or Dio instead, or even both, with the _Cygnus_ tossed in for good measure.

"This is Dio," she heard the red-clad pilot call over the radio. "Mission complete; I'm returning to base."

"Aoba, likewise," Luxon's pilot said cheerfully.

She was linked into their tactical frequency now, no longer relying on the Coupling Urgent Search Mode that had connected her unit with Aoba's, so she was able to hear clearly the cheering from _Cygnus._ _"The conquering heroes return,"_ a voice she didn't recognize commented, sounding tired but distinctly satisfied.

Flying in formation with Luxon NX and its twin, returning to the Swan, Hina finally had time to let the tension run out of her muscles, and to think on what, exactly, had just happened. The certain clarity she'd gained when she finally understood the nature of the time loop had vanished; she didn't even know how the paradox could work, with Aoba here despite Bizon never having gone back at all. How _she_ could be here, outside the loop that had been her entire existence.

Again, she was left adrift, uncertain. The only question, even, that she could think of to ask was… "Why, Aoba?"

That worthy looked up at her from the comm display, clearly puzzled. "Why, what, Hina?"

"Why did you stop me? That could've gone wrong so many ways! And…" Hina paused, another possibility occurring to her. "You might even have been able to go home! So why…?"

That stymied him for a moment. "Why did I stop you? Well…" He smiled, shrugging. "I didn't want to let you go, that's all."

Hina's heart lurched again. _Didn't want… to let me go? Aoba…_

She was reminded, very briefly, of Bizon. That thought was quickly dismissed: even if Aoba _was_ thinking along those lines -and the thought that he might be did interesting things to her stomach- he was _nothing_ like what Bizon had become.

In the end, it came down to a simple distinction: Bizon had blackmailed her and tried to take her by force. Aoba had listened, offered her a choice, and offered a hand, leaving the decision of whether to take it entirely in her hands.

And now, he'd even sacrificed a chance to return to his own time, for the sake of rescuing her from an eternal loop.

Dio, surprisingly, seemed to be following her thoughts; or maybe not so surprisingly, since he'd been dealing with Aoba even longer than she had. "You're wasting your time," he told her sardonically. "You're trying to apply logic to Watase Aoba. He doesn't _use_ logic, remember?"

"Hey, what the hell was that for?" Aoba demanded, visibly affronted. "There could be plenty of other chances, y'know!"

"That's what they call 'blind optimism', right there."

"But it's true, isn't it? What were the odds of it happening even once? You never know what might happen in the future!" The offended look suddenly vanished, replaced with a smile Hina found both endearing, and a little scary. "Besides, there's one guy around here who'd miss me, if I disappeared."

She got the point immediately. That Dio evidently did not, was one of the first things she'd found funny in days, if not longer.

"Tch," was his only reply at first, and an absent one at that. Only after a few seconds did Dio abruptly do a double take. "Wait, you're not talking about _me,_ are you?!"

Aoba laughed. "Well, who _else_ would I be talking about? You're even more dense than I thought!"

"Dense?!" The blonde pilot looked like he was going to combust on the spot. "I can't believe I'd hear that from _you,_ of all people! And there's no way in _hell_ that I'd miss you!"

Hina had to laugh at the byplay, tension draining back out again. She didn't know what was going to happen now, but the _Cygnus_ had accepted even Aoba, who had no credentials to his name and had made the -until today- unbelievable claim to have come from the past.

Surely a Zogilian defector, vouched for by Aoba himself and even Dio, could find a place there?

_Aoba's right. You never know what the future might bring._ Hina smiled to herself. _I'd like to find out… with Aoba._

They were coming up on the _Cygnus_ now, and the argument had apparently died off. "Luxon NX and Bradyon NX," Dio radioed, "coming in for a landing, along with one captured…" He paused. "Excuse me, one _defected_ Valiancer."

"_Roger that!" _The voice sounded vaguely familiar; Hina thought she'd heard it at some point when she was fighting off the forced Coupling, though it sounded much more cheerful now. _"Flight deck is ready to receive Valiancer team! We'll be waiting for you."_

* * *

When Hina shut down her Valiancer at last, ensconced in _Cygnus_' hangar, and popped the hatch, she wasn't sure what to expect. She'd never been aboard a Confederate ship before, of course, and her time infiltrating one of their military bases had been quite brief. The only real guide she had was her experience with the Zogilian military, which she somehow suspected wouldn't do her much good here.

The presence of what seemed like half the crew waiting for her and her companions just about confirmed that surmise. There couldn't be more than a skeleton crew actually running the ship, something that wouldn't have been permitted aboard a Zogilian vessel.

Two of them, Hina thought, had the look of senior officers; the captain and executive officer, if she was any judge. Along with them was a younger girl with pink hair, most likely a junior officer, and what looked like a civilian in a lab coat and daring dress.

That odd assemblage surprised her. The armed guards, regrettably, did not, and she felt herself begin to tense again.

She twitched when Aoba laid a reassuring hand on her shoulder, and even Dio shot her a look suggesting things were under control.

"Welcome back, Aoba, Dio," the captain said warmly, smiling at the pilots. "Very good work out there today, very good indeed."

"Thank you, Captain Kuramitsu," Aoba replied, coming to attention. "We… we did our best."

"Which was more than good enough." Kuramitsu turned his attention, then, to Hina herself. "And this is…?"

She swallowed. She'd known this moment was coming, but that didn't make it any less nerve-wracking. "H… Yumihara Hina," she said, saluting awkwardly. "Formerly an ensign of Great Zogilia."

There was a wary, watchful silence. Hina didn't really blame them; and actually, it wasn't as bad as she'd expected. When she'd come back from her first encounter with Aoba, she'd been nearly shot as a traitor, and that had been by her own people, despite her own attempt to kill Aoba.

The apparent exec made the next move, eyeing her suspiciously. "Pardon me, Ensign Yumihara, but while Ensign Watase may vouch for you, and…" She looked uncomfortable for a moment. "It appears we should be taking his word much more readily now, but the fact remains that defectors are, by nature, suspect. Why, exactly, would you be so willing to betray your own country? I find it difficult to believe that the ensign is the only reason."

Hina had known the question was coming from the moment she'd realized she wouldn't be caught in a time loop after all, and had spent considerable thought on how to answer it. In the end, the only thing she could think of was to grab the bull by the horns, and lay it all out.

_It's nothing but the truth, after all. I can't go back after everything, and with Father gone and Bizon… gone… I don't even really want to._

"Commander," she began, guessing at the other woman's rank, "to be honest, Zogilia betrayed me, first. In the past weeks, I have been confined and nearly shot for 'contact with the enemy' that consisted of me trying to shoot him, blackmailed and sexually assaulted by someone I had considered a close friend, and drugged into participating in an experiment I'd declined. As Aoba has probably told you, my father also recently died, the aftermath of which _also_ nearly got me shot by my friend. On top of all that, there are temporal mechanics issues which Aoba can fill you in on.

"In short, Commander, I have no particular reason to remain with Zogilia, considerable reason never to return, and at least one concrete reason to stay here." At this last, Hina nodded significantly at Aoba, who, to her surprise, actually blushed.

The exec's eyebrows had crept up through the litany, and now she exchanged a glance with Kuramitsu. "Captain…?"

He thought on it for a few moments, before smiling amiably. "Provisionally, I'm inclined to take the young lady at her word. It's hardly the wildest tale we've heard lately, is it?" The exec nodded, obviously unwillingly, and he chuckled. "There is, of course, much fact-checking to be done, but I'm sure we're all very tired from the battle. If you don't mind, I'd like to have Doctor Hill look you over-for health reasons," he hastened to add, seeing the look on her face. "She's _our_ expert on Coupling, and will be able to tell if there are any lasting side effects from your forced Coupling. While that's being done, we'll see about arranging quarters for you, all right?"

Hina blinked. Just how relaxed _was_ this ship? Sure, Aoba had been accepted with apparently minimal difficulty, but that was a much more favorable deal than she'd expected. At the least, she'd expected to spend _some_ time in the brig, if only for security reasons; as it was, the only thing she could remotely object to the medical examination, and from what she could tell this Doctor Hill was actually the one behind the plan that had freed her from the forced Coupling with Bizon.

_Surely they should be taking greater precautions than this!_

Then she saw the look the exec was giving Captain Kuramitsu, and realized it probably _wasn't_ exactly according to regs. The fact that she wasn't actually protesting suggested that it was also something she'd gotten used to from the captain: a kind of resigned exasperation was the impression Hina got.

"That's more than I could've asked for, Captain," Hina said finally. "Frankly, I expected to be locked up, at least for a while."

Kuramitsu smiled. "You'll be kept under a degree of observation for a while, of course, Ensign. However, after today's events, and Aoba's vouching for you, I see no reason to take things to excess."

"Besides," she heard the exec mutter, "the last story we heard was even less likely, and look how _that_ turned out…"

Beside her, Aoba chuckled. "You'll be fine now, Hina," he told her softly. "This is a good ship."

Although she found the look the pink-haired junior officer was giving her mildly unsettling, Hina was, finally, ready to believe Aoba might really be right.

_It's time to start over,_ she thought. _Time to move forward, after who knows how long repeating the same events over and over again._

* * *

The medical examination was, mercifully, both cautious and completely non-invasive, consisting more of brain scans than anything else. To Hina's relief, Doctor Hill in no way resembled Hahn, and if her bedside manner was a little clipped, it was fairly obviously outrage over the latter's methods.

From the look of things, Doctor Hill, at least, took oaths of professional conduct very seriously. Aoba confirmed that to her after the examination, noting that "Elvira" had been furious with him and Dio for using the Skyknight and Firebrand prototypes, not because they were disobeying orders, but because it could've killed them.

Far cry from Doctor Hahn, who undoubtedly would've been deeply intrigued by the memory-sharing effects of the prototype Coupling System.

There were no armed guards escorting her to whatever quarters had been assigned to her, just Aoba, Dio, and the exec she'd learned was a Commander Kleinbeck; although Hina got the impression Kleinbeck herself was surprisingly dangerous, and Aoba asserted Dio had a mean right hook, it seemed they truly were willing to give her the benefit of the doubt, for now at least.

Although Kleinbeck seemed to be exasperated about something, bearing much the same look she'd turned on Kuramitsu in the hangar.

Hina wasn't sure what to make of that, nor the fact that Dio seemed gruffly amused by something. It wasn't until Aoba did a double take that she got any inkling as to just what was going on; right when they reached one particular hatch and stopped, Aoba blinked and shot a confused look at the exec.

"Commander Kleinbeck…?" he began uncertainly. "Er, these are…"

Kleinbeck sighed, rolling her eyes. "Not my idea, Ensign. The Captain insisted, suggesting that this was the best way to 'keep an eye' on Ensign Yumihara without invoking 'excessive force'. This is the arrangement until further notice." Shaking her head, she turned to leave. "Not much to be done about it tonight, but tomorrow I'll at least have Stores move a spare bunk into there."

"If you need it," Dio muttered under his breath. Turning to follow the exec, he tossed over his shoulder, "Don't worry about him, Yumihara. Aoba's too dense to try anything he shouldn't."

"Why, you-!"

Aoba's retort was evidently more reflexive than anything else. As soon as the other officers were gone -and could no longer distract from the situation at hand- his confidence seemed to collapse. He was actually blushing again, and couldn't seem to meet Hina's eyes.

"Aoba…?"

"The captain does things like this," he muttered. "Nobody's sure if he's brilliant or insane, but it tends to work out." Aoba coughed, moving to open the hatch. "Um… these are actually _my_ quarters."

Hina stared at him. "Oh." _…Oh. I… think I see why the commander kept looking at the captain that way. I… didn't expect this._

Aoba gestured for her to enter, and with some mutual discomfort they both did. Unsurprisingly, the cabin was pretty barebones; given that Aoba had arrived in this era with nothing but the clothes on his back and had spent the time since almost constantly on the battlefield, he couldn't really have had time to acquire much in the way of personal items.

There was, basically, a bunk, a chair by a computer terminal, and a few mostly empty shelves and storage cupboards. Standard junior officer fare, not so different from her own quarters aboard her old ship; now that she thought about it, she hadn't had a great deal of personal effects, either.

Of course, her old quarters also hadn't had Watase Aoba in them.

A bit of awkward ducking in and out of the quarters later, and both were dressed for sleep; being as Hina had come aboard only with the flightsuit, she was grateful its lower layers could at least approximate for comfortable sleepwear. Comfortable _sleeping_ was a bit dicier.

Soon enough, though, Aoba was sitting in his computer chair, having nervously ceded Hina the bunk; she was under the covers now, staring up at the deckhead. "Um… quite a day, wasn't it?" he essayed at length.

"Yeah," she agreed, grateful he'd spoken up. After everything, she wasn't quite ready to sleep yet. "…I think it turned out as well as it could've, though."

"I'm just glad I won't have to worry about fighting you anymore," Aoba said, with a nervous chuckle. "…Can I ask you what happened back there? That guy… was that the friend who…?"

"Yes," Hina admitted. "Bizon. In the end, almost everything came back to Bizon." She closed her eyes, remembering the friend Bizon Gerafil had once been. "He hated you. From the moment you and I first met, he hated you."

Aoba looked at her quizzically. "What did I _do_ to him? You said he was the one who tried to kill me in the past, too, but _why?"_

Hina sat up, turning to look at him. "The Special Officer on my ship thought your attempt to contact me meant I was a traitor," she began. "Even though I didn't know anything about you, and even tried to kill you. Bizon decided that killing you would clear my name… and that was before we met on that island."

He winced. "He found about that, huh? Well, I guess we didn't cover our tracks very well; Dio beat me up after that one."

"I'm not a very good liar, either," Hina noted. "…I take it Dio didn't take it any further, though? Bizon threatened to. From then on, he started saying things like how he was 'the only one who could forgive me', and threatened to tell our superiors if I strayed."

"He _blackmailed_ you?!"

She actually smiled, hearing the outrage in Aoba's voice, before the next part of her tale soured her mood again. "Something went wrong with his mind," she said softly. "I don't know what, but… I'd grown up with Bizon, you know? We lived right next door to each other. But a real friend should've sympathized with what I was going through, not tried to blackmail me into never 'leaving' him." Hina paused. "The… assault I mentioned, it was right after my father's funeral. He ranted at me about you, told me my father would be ashamed, and…"

When Aoba spoke again, it was in a low, angry growl. "He forced himself on you? _Then,_ of all times?"

From the look on his face, Hina suspected Aoba would've happily killed Bizon all over again. That was one thing she found interesting about him: aside from his refusal to fight _her,_ he was about as fine with the realities of war as any civilian could be, let alone someone in _his_ position.

Although Bizon was probably a special case anyway. He'd nearly killed Aoba before Aoba had even _done_ any of the things Bizon hated him for, and given Aoba's apparent protectiveness toward Hina herself…

"It didn't go too far," Hina assured him at length, leaning back into the pillow. "I slapped him for it, and that was pretty much the end of it. Still…"

"He had no right to do that," Aoba said, voice low. "That's not what 'friends' do. Not ever." He took a deep breath, forcing himself to calm down. "What happened after that?"

"I'm not completely sure," she admitted. "The last thing I remember clearly is being in Doctor Hahn's office, when I declined his request that I try the Coupling System. Everything after that is a blur, until you came and snapped me out of it." She smiled at him then, prompting him to glance away with faint blush. "If it helps, I don't think Bizon did anything else to me then. I got the impression, from what happened in that battle, that he was too busy trying to become a compatible Coupling partner."

Aoba nodded thoughtfully, beginning to cool down now that the subject had moved on. "Apparently not very successfully," he remarked. "Elvira said the readings she got showed a poor match."

"Unlike us, apparently." Hina's comment caused him to blush again, but he certainly wasn't about to argue the point. Not after their Coupling, supercharged by a blast fit to level a city, ripped a hole in the space-time continuum.

There was silence for a little bit after that. There was a lot to say, really, a lot that each wanted to know about the other; so much that neither really knew where to start. The fact that Hina was, after everything Aoba had gone through trying to get through to her, lying in his _bed_ at this particular moment made things just a bit awkward.

Certainly _Hina_ was feeling a bit off. She just wasn't sure if that was a bad thing or not. She was "safe" now, but everything was still unsettled; her world had never stabilized after her father's death, let alone everything that came after.

"Well," Aoba said, awkwardly breaking the silence, "we should probably get some sleep." He smiled reassuringly at her. "I don't think we're going to be fighting again for a little while after what happened today, but I'm sure things will still be busy for us tomorrow."

She thought he was probably right, on both counts. Certainly Zogilian efforts in the theater were going to be in turmoil for some time to come, after the disastrous losses and the economic impact from the overuse of the Gala Puska. Not to mention there were undoubtedly going to be questions about the outright _singularity_ that had appeared during the battle.

Tomorrow, no doubt Hina herself was going to be interrogated at length, and there were going to be a lot of questions about what to do with her. She wasn't looking forward to that. Still, it seemed that the _Cygnus_ would give her a much fairer hearing than her own people had, for considerably less.

_You never know what might happen in the future,_ Hina reminded herself, settling in. _Things can go wrong in ways you never expect; and also…_

Another thought occurred to her, just as Aoba started to reach for the cabin's light switch. "…Aoba? You're not planning to sleep in that chair, are you?"

He looked at her in surprise. "Well, there _is_ only the one bunk," he pointed out reasonably. "The Commander said she'd get another one put in here tomorrow, but for right now…"

Hina swallowed, heart hammering at the thought of what she was about to suggest. Not that she didn't trust Aoba… actually, she realized with a blush, the problem was really the exact opposite. She wasn't sure which was more worse: the schoolgirl-like embarrassment, or the embarrassment at _being_ that kind of embarrassed.

"Aoba," she said finally, "come here." She slid to the far side of the bunk, patting the blanket next to her.

Aoba stared at her, instantly flushing. "H-Hina," he stuttered. "W-what are you-?"

"Please," she said, blushing herself but not willing to give up now that she'd gone this far. "I'm the interloper here; you shouldn't have to be uncomfortable. And…" Hina hesitated, glancing away. "…I don't want to be alone just now," she admitted, almost too softly to be heard.

There was a long, awkward pause. Finally, Aoba moved to turn off the lights, and she thought that he was going to insist on the chair anyway; then, hesitantly, she felt the covers move, and Aoba's weight settled onto the bunk.

"…You're sure about this?" he whispered.

"Yeah. …Thank you, Aoba." Mustering her courage, Hina slid back over to his side, and shifted so that she was lying partly on his chest, arms wrapping around him, legs intertwining with his. She could feel him go rigid for a second -_Probably with shock,_ she thought, hardly able to believe her own daring- before he started to gradually relax.

After a moment, he even returned her embrace, pulling her close so that her head rested on his shoulder. This close, she could hear his heartbeat, fully as rapid as her own. "…I'm glad you're here, Hina," Aoba whispered, hugging her a little tighter. "Even after everything that's happened, I'm glad I came to this time… because you're here."

Hina's heart jumped at that. "…Me, too," she murmured, glad the darkness and closeness hid a blush she was _sure_ could've lit up the entire cabin. "I'm glad you didn't give up on me, Aoba."

"Never," he said firmly. "Never."

She snuggled a little closer at that, and allowed herself to finally drift off in Aoba's arms, the events of the day finally catching up with her. _That's right,_ she thought sleepily. _You never know what might happen in the future. _Good_ things can happen, too, that you'd never imagine. Aoba… I want to see the future, beyond the eternity I almost suffered. I want to see the future you gave me… with you…_

No one knew the future. Yumihara Hina's present, wrapped up with Watase Aoba, was better than she could've ever asked for. Even unto Eternity.

* * *

**And Now, A Word From The Author**

The Seeker here -look up the name; that's what it means, at least according to Google Translate. If it's wrong, feel free to correct me- with the first of a series of pet projects. Certain fandoms are sorely lacking in certain things, and _Buddy Complex_ is one of them.

C'mon, guys. Whether Aoba and Hina are definitively, positively "in love", their relationship -however you define it- is pretty much the central part of the series. It's pretty much the only reason anything actually happens, the more so if -like me- you suspect they're actually, somehow, the original basis for the Coupling System.

Hey, Elvira _does_ say that Aoba matching the "ideal" waveform so precisely is an astronomically unlikely coincidence, right?

Anyway. As important as Dio is -and frankly, I'm a little bit baffled by the number of people who think he and Aoba are actually into each other "that" way; Coupling terminology aside, I _really_ don't see it- Hina is overall a _lot_ more important to the story. Dio says it himself: "There is no doubt that Yumihara Hina holds the key to it all."

So, yeah. First real Aoba/Hina fic, as far as I can tell. Won't be the last, either; I've got another one planned out that should be turning up soon, diverging from this fic during the time tunnel sequence. Won't spoil the details, but let's say I liked the potential of the beginning scenes of the series.

Now I just need to track down the name of Aoba's little sister; I think it was only mentioned once…

Right-oh. You'll probably be seeing me in the _Blast of Tempest_ section soon, too; that's another one that seems to have completely missed the point of the series. Till then, let me know if this is any good, or if it's total garbage that goes completely against canon (frankly, I doubt that one, but who knows).

_A Seeker is always seeking, without knowing the answer until they are upon it…_


End file.
